


you don't have to be an optimist about this

by washingmachineheart



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, No Beta, No Plot/Plotless, Other, Siblings, just letting luka cry sometimes yknow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:40:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25896853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/washingmachineheart/pseuds/washingmachineheart
Summary: Or the one where Luka allows himself to feel something.
Relationships: Juleka Couffaine & Luka Couffaine
Comments: 6
Kudos: 20





	you don't have to be an optimist about this

Luka is alone, or at least he feels alone. Paris was going through a rather rainy spring lately, and the odd little boat they called home was rather cold that evening. Juleka, enjoying her Friday night plans: watching live concert footage with her new headphones. He hears the pitter-patters of the rhythmic beats that escape it. He’s on his bed, pressed up against the pillows that are resting on his bed frame. He is holding his acoustic guitar - a wooden, dark blue Yamaha covered in stickers. He simply caresses it for a while, his fingers making wonky and indistinct sounds with the strings. The stickers he pasted as a middle schooler - faded band logos, faces of rock stars he once wished so badly to meet. 

He held on the acoustic for a few reasons. One, because it was easier to bring around. The beated up exterior freed him of the guilt of eroding its already withering quality, given how old it was. It also sat nicely in his bike basket, so if a tune ever came to mind while being a part-time delivery boy he didn’t have to make a round trip to sea and back. He could stop, play, and move on. It was the one thing in his life that was consistently easy. He starts to play a few notes. He does not use a pick, and he begins playing I’m Yours - a beginner’s song, to warm up. 

Two,  _ because _ it was easy. Things don’t usually come as easy, he knew that too well. He refused to use a pick playing the acoustic because it left callouses. The ridges would go a little deeper into his fingerprints. Playing it gave him something visible to remember, giving himself little pinches of pain to the things he would touch later on. He plays the song twice. He stops mid-second attempt, and looks at his callouses. He curls his fingers into a weak fist, and sighs to himself softly. He makes a quick inspection on Juleka, who is smiling goofily behind her phone screen. He plays a few warm-up notes, just to make sure she isn’t listening. 

The guitar had to be tuned a good deal before each time he would play it. He liked to think his father borrowed it from time to time, playing his own shows in the clouds like he always wanted to. It just felt more real somehow, like his spirit would melt into the old thing and he felt his soul link to any divine entity that would listen. He closes his eyes, and lets his fingers move on instinct. Crazy Little Thing Called Love is heard, and he plays the song on its own. He doesn’t sing along. 

He couldn’t explain why he loved music. At least, not coherently. But the easiest version was that it made him happy. His first memory was his father singing a lullaby to him. So many firsts came with music. The euphoria that came with holding the acoustic for the first time. Performing at his third grade school talent show, with his father sitting in the crowd and smiling a wonderful, bright smile. His father had a beautiful smile, it was one of those you couldn’t forget. His eyes, usually shielded from the sun with his own streaks of blue as a fringe, would glimmer along with his lips rising to physically show his happiness. 

He feels his chest turning in over itself, sending a lump into his throat.  _ It was already beginning to hurt.  _ A tear falls down his cheek, and lands right onto the body of the guitar. It seeped into the already battered stickers. 

Once, his mother had taken him and a younger Juleka to the airport. They had watched the planes take off for hours, theorizing where in the world they might be heading to. Mom had pointed to one, a plane with a dark blue streak across its body. “Your dad’s in there,” she had said. She had her hands on his shoulders, and he remembers smiling gleefully, asking where he was going to go. “He’s going on a long trip.” Was all she replied, and fell silent and wouldn’t specify where.  _ On a long trip  _ seemed to insinuate.. Going on a trip. People who go on trips have return tickets. At some point, they would come back. They had to. 

He didn’t know she was just trying her best to soften to blow. It wasn’t a good attempt, but he couldn’t discredit her effort. She was sad too. She couldn’t have known what to do on her own, let alone with two kids by her side. 

He just wished it didn’t have to sink in as they stood over a grave the week after. The way his mother sobbed in her room afterward, leaving him and Juleka standing by her door not knowing what to do. He knew he wanted to cry too, but with the way Juleka looked at him he knew it wasn’t a good time. They ended up playing Guitar Hero relentlessly at the arcade with a babysitter the next day, with a lump in his throat that he couldn’t ignore. 

He stops playing, and this time he is truly crying. The tears come at full force now, his body shaking and the callouses digging deep into his knees as he placed his head onto his knees. He was beginning to be vulnerable and afraid, something he felt strongly when he felt alone. Afraid because the notes of a Queen song was the only thing concrete he had left of his father. Pictures were no more, apparently they had been misplaced in a move. It made him afraid that one day he might forget how to play the song. And then there would be nothing left. 

He begins to sob harder, the years of suppressing the pain hitting him like a wrecking ball. He knows too much negative emotion could lead to danger, but he couldn’t find it in his heart to care. He was akumatized once, he was already a potential pawn. If he had to be akumatized for just being in pain - so be it, he thought. What an odd villain he could make, lashing out on Paris to avenge his dead father. Even though there was really nothing to avenge. Sometimes he just wanted him back.  _ If you want to akumatize me, do it now,  _ he mumbled, almost wishing it would happen right there and then. All akumatizations were truly just another form of narcotic. 

A cold hand is on his back, and he looks up through the blur of his tears. Juleka is by his side, and she offers him a sad smile. Instinctively he embraces her, and she returns it. “I miss him,” is all he can barely even say. He can feel her nod slightly. She doesn’t say anything, but hugs him tighter. 

“You can say anything,” she whispers. “Or nothing at all, if that’s what you want.” He chuckles. His sister truly knew his tactics too well when it came to emotional support. He lets a weak laugh, at the fact that she had flipped the switch on him. The pain lingered, but it was also lifted. Even if it was just a little. 

It was a small, small world they lived in. And he wouldn’t lose the people he had with him. 


End file.
